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Goren's response to Frawley-O'Dea's “When the Trauma Is Terrorism and the Therapist Is Traumatized Too: Working as an Analyst Since 9/11” criticizes the overuse of “the trauma model.” Without clearly defining the model, she characterizes it as formulaic, constricting, and as aiding analysts in their “denial of death.”
This commentary argues for a richer understanding of traumatology, especially regarding adult-onset trauma. The challenge facing psychoanalysis is not to avoid seeing trauma everywhere. Rather, it calls for educating ourselves in recent brain research and integrative approaches to trauma treatment, so that we do see the trauma we may have overlooked and so that we learn to ask questions that will bring memories, symptoms, and dissociation to the surface.
Goren's critique of trauma therapists can be turned back to her. In emphasizing the phenomenon of death, and the human struggle to comprehend mortality, perhaps proponents of existentialist analysis are resisting facing trauma.